If only I'd known then what I know now…

First of all, I’m late posting today because I’ve been outside raking pine straw. It’s been raining daily here, and the wind and rain sure do make a mess under these pine trees! We’re trying to get some new grass started in front of our house, so it’s necessary to keep the straw raked on a regular basis, especially when it’s falling like it is now!

My cat, Bobs, sitting in the middle of “the soup garden”. Our “regular garden” is to the far right…

Let me begin by saying…who knew that heirloom seeds would come back up as “volunteers” once they’d been plowed under? Thanks to those hearty seeds, we now have more “volunteer plants” than we have regular plants! Our unplanted section of the garden is littered with volunteer peas, tomatoes, and even some watermelons! It looks like someone took the seeds and just threw them everywhere! I’m ready for Ed to plow these rogue plants under, but he sort of wants to leave them alone, and see what happens with them…He lovingly refers to that section of the garden as “the soup garden”!

The four rows of seeds that we planted, over a week ago, on the other side of the garden, are doing “so-so”. We have a fantastic stand of colored butterbeans, corn, and brown crowder peas. The plants that we transplanted look pretty good, too. The pink-eyed peas and green beans? Not so good…I guess the Lord knows what we need, so we’ll be content with whatever we have. I’m sure we’ll have more than enough to keep us busy and fed.

Our problem, at the moment, with our garden, is all of the rain we’ve been receiving lately. Rain is a good thing, but too much prevents us from being able to go out and hoe or pull the weeds because it’s either raining, or the soil is too soggy. Rain also makes weeds grow out-of-control quickly! Even our planted rows are already littered with “volunteer plants”, and then there’s all of those weeds…I hope we get a chance to clean things up before they get too far out of control! By the way, it’s too early for our potatoes to sprout yet, but I’m already beginning to worry about them rotting in the saturated soil, too.

This past weekend, Ed and I made a trip to Lowes. While we were there, I discovered a book called “The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible”. I took a few minutes to browse through it, and was impressed with its wealth of information, so I bought it. I think this book will come in very handy next spring! Looking back, it’s a miracle that Ed and I did as well as we did with our first gardening experience–considering our extreme lack of knowledge! Thankfully, we had some friends and family who were more knowledgeable than we were! Thanks to a little experience, some friendly advice, and our new book, we’ll be better prepared next year!